I think my decision to come and train in Japan was made between 1973
and 1975, when I lived in the U.S.A. as a student. All my teachers so
far had been Japanese and in the U.S., I received some more strong
evidence of the crucial Japanese dimension to aikido, when I saw Doshu
Kisshomaru Ueshiba and other senior shihans in the Aikikai. My
decision was hastened by the internal political problems at Harvard
University, where I was a Ph.D. student without a supervisor, for he
had jumped ship and returned to the U.K. and another influential
teacher had migrated to Cornell. Since I was still relatively young
and not yet weighed down by family responsibilities, I decided that
this was the best time to go. However, I had been discouraged from
going to in Japan solely as an aikido uchi-deshi, and I also
knew that being in Japan without any means of stable income was
impossible. So I called the British Embassy in Washington and enquired
about teaching opportunities in Japan. They did not exactly pour cold
water on the idea, but stressed that if I wanted employment in a good
Japanese university, I would need to undergo a rigorous interview by
the British Council (the U.K. government's overseas 'cultural'
organization) and this could be done only in London. So I put the idea
on a back burner and returned to the U.K. to continue my Ph.D.

My Ph.D. -- and a heavy dose of intensive aikido training at the
Ryushinkan Dojo in London -- took up the next few years in the U.K, so
I was not able to consider going to Japan until around 1978/79. I had
not lost my appetite, however. During these years I met K. Chiba
Shihan once again and came to know him quite well--well enough to ask
him deep questions about his training in the Hombu, about the
spiritual aspects of his training and his dedication to Zen
meditation. Chiba Sensei was the Technical Adviser of the B.A.F. and
visited the U.K. quite often. I also met a number of Japanese shihan
resident in Europe and once attended a memorable seminar given by
Morihiro Saito Sensei. The Traditional Aikido volumes were
appearing at this time and the entire contents of the first three
volumes were gradually added to the training curriculum at
Ryushinkan. We mastered--or thought we had mastered--all the ken and
jo suburi, awase, kata, and
kumi-tachi/kumi-jo forms. So meeting the author in the flesh
and training under his direction was an awesome experience, as was
hearing Saito Sensei speak about O Sensei. In fact, many of these
shihan talked of their experiences as special students (the term they
invariably used was uchi-deshi) of the Founder and I gradually
fleshed out the shadowy image I had of this strange man.

However, I thought of O Sensei and Japan rather like a devoted
Christian thinks of Jesus and the Holy Land. Devoted Muslims go to
Mecca once in their lives and devoted Christians go to the Holy Land
once in their lives and trace the footsteps of Jesus as he was led to
Calvary. So devoted aikidoists (I did not yet think of myself as an
aikidouka) go to Japan to visit Tanabe, Shirataki and Ayabe and
train at the Hombu Dojo and Iwama. It was Chiba Sensei who disabused
me of this pious notion and strongly advised me not to go to Japan
solely to practice aikido. Another way of putting this would be that
he advised me to ground my aikido training in Japan in other, more
secular, activities. In the meantime, I had my rigorous interview with
the British Council and also did some training in teaching English as
a Foreign Language (E.F.L.) as well. (Teaching E.F.L., by the way, was
the usual employment of Ph.D. students in English universities who had
not finished writing their doctoral theses by the time the scholarship
support had run out.) At this time E.F.L. training in the
U.K. envisaged classes of up to 12-15 earnest, well-motivated
students, who studied English in the U.K., in class for three hours
daily, and supplemented their class study with intensive
extra-curricular activities. It is hardly necessary to add that
conditions in Japanese academic institutions were somewhat different,
as I was shortly to find out.

In late February 1980, I received notification from the British
Council that I could choose to work as a lecturer in English in one of
three Japanese national universities: Tohoku University in Sendai,
Hiroshima University in Hiroshima, and Oita University, in Kyushu. The
British Council advised me to choose Hiroshima University, since my
qualifications most closely matched the job description, and I
accepted their advice. I arrived in Hiroshima on 31 March 1980 on a
one-year contract. Since then there has always been a matter of
interesting speculation for me: if I had gone to either of the other
two universities, in what ways would my aikido training have been
different?

Interlude
Japan: To Go or Not to Go?
That is the Question

At the time I considered this question, back in 1974, it was a
no-brainer. There was no question but that Japan was the best place to
be for intensive aikido training. All of the direct disciples of the
Founder lived in Japan, including those who had taught Chiba Sensei
and his deshi colleagues, and most of these people rarely ventured
outside Japan. At the Aikikai Hombu, all the morning classes were
taught by the second Doshu Kisshomaru Ueshiba. On Tuesday, Wednesday
and Thursday evenings classes were taught respectively by three
shihans, each with their own distinctive stamp of aikido: Seigo
Yamaguchi, Sadateru Arikawa and Hiroshi Tada. Arikawa Sensei would
occasionally appear at Doshu's class on Friday evenings and
practice. Outside Tokyo there were also a number of shihans who had a
close relationship with the Founder: Rinjoro Shirata in Yamagata,
Morihiro Saito and Hiroshi Isoyama in Iwama, Ikusai Iwata in Nagoya,
Michio Hikitsuchi in Shingu, Bansen Tanaka and Seiseki Abe in Osaka,
and Kanshu Sunadomari in Kumamoto. These were just the senior
shihans. In addition, for those who had the chance, there were other,
more mysterious, koryu arts to practice. It is not that aikido is not
mysterious; rather, the mysteries lie well beneath the surface and one
has to dig hard to find them and even harder to penetrate them.

Now, thirty years later, circumstances have changed and it is no
longer such a simple question. A maturing process has taken place,
both inside and outside Japan, and it is no longer so clear that one's
aikido training will automatically be better in Japan than in one's
own country. The maturing process has been different--or perhaps it is
more correct to say that it is more advanced--in Japan than
abroad. The present Doshu was a boy when the Founder died and he
received most of his training from his father Kisshomaru. The ranks of
senior shihan who trained hard with O Sensei have gradually thinned
and so it is correct to state that the Hombu has become more of an
organization where one can train well in aikido as interpreted by
Doshu, than a loose framework within which some uniquely gifted
individuals were able to show their originality. Abroad, the maturing
process has seen the emergence of high-ranked individuals who have had
thirty years or more of continuous training at the hands of the
original deshi who went to live abroad. So it is no longer a matter
simply of people outside Japan waiting to receive training from the
Hombu shihans in Japan, for some of the former match the latter in
rank. Even at the time I chose to come to Japan, Chiba Sensei was
aware of this maturing process taking place and let me make up my own
mind: he neither encouraged me nor discouraged me and later, when I
was in Japan and we met and talked, we both realized that I was
encountering some aspects of the Japanese martial arts in general, and
of aikido in particular, that are usually played down by Japanese
instructors who reside outside Japan.

One way of putting this would be to use the Japanese distinction
between tatemae and honne. The Japanese have an
exquisitely refined sense of when it is appropriate to reveal their
true feelings and what they really think and when these should be
concealed, that is, left for others to work out. A parallel
distinction can be made between what is omote and what is
ura. Perhaps these terms are more understandable, for they are
used in aikido training and it is a very instructive exercise to see
the interplay of these concepts--frames, really--in daily life. So, it
is sometimes believed that Japan is a land of aikido wa -- or
harmony, where all are training happily under the benevolent guidance
of Doshu in the Aikikai Hombu. This was certainly the impression I had
before I came here and it did not take me long to realize that aikido
in Japan is just as 'political' as it is outside Japan; there are
teachers who do not do the techniques well; there are teachers who
refuse to allow their students to train with other Aikikai teachers;
there are teachers who find it hard to accept the fact that foreigners
can understand aikido and practice well--as well as the Japanese; and
there are teachers who seen to make no effort to relate what they
practice in the dojo to what they do outside. It also did not take me
long to realize the peril of judging one culture by the values of
another.

Nevertheless, I should state that I would not now automatically advise
anyone thinking of coming to Japan to come right over and start
training. It is necessary to think very carefully beforehand of the
advantages and disadvantages, not just in general, but as they would
affect one in one's real situation. For example, it is pointless to
come here with the aim of aikido training if one's job prevents one
from actually doing much training. It is pointless to come here as an
uchi-deshi unless one can develop the correct relationship with
one's teacher. It might be an interesting cultural experience, but it
will not be the experience of a real uchi-deshi.

Work

Hiroshima has been made world famous because of what
happened at 8.15 on August 6, 1945, but in other respects it is a
hopelessly provincial city. It prides itself on being an
'International City of Peace and Culture', but I take a certain
perverse delight in telling my Japanese friends here that only two
elements of this description are strictly true (Hiroshima is a city
and cities tend to be peaceful places by virtue of their being
cities). Yesterday a taxi driver told me that, unlike in Tokyo,
taxi-drivers in Hiroshima did not need a navigation system in their
taxis because Hiroshima was inaka (a country town -- the term
was intended to convey the image of a place full of country bumpkins
who probably would not be able to use a navigation system even if they
had one).

The university was a large national university. There was an
unofficial ranking system for Japanese universities and Hiroshima
University occupied around the eighth or tenth place, after the
so-called 'Imperial' universities like Tokyo and Kyoto and the older
private universities like Waseda and Keio. By Japanese national
university standards it was a very large university, with 14
faculties. All students had to take English classes and this is where
I came in. My colleagues wanted a 'fresh' approach and I was
specifically told that I did not need to learn Japanese, the idea
being that this would somehow cause my students to blossom into
English. Alas, it never worked and I still remember my first class,
with 60 students from the Faculty of Dentistry, who were stunned into
baleful silence by my cheery English greetings and questions. They had
never come into such close contact with a foreigner before and had no
clue what I was saying, despite having studied English for six years
already.

Language

When I knew that I was coming to Japan, the timing was such that I was
unable even to start learning Japanese. I knew plenty of aikido terms,
but increasingly realized that knowledge of these terms did not
remotely resemble anything like even a smattering of the
language. There is a belief, especially cherished in Internet
discussion forums, to the effect that, despite the absence of any
actual competence in the language, an acquaintance with certain
Japanese terms, such as KI, KOKYUU, will afford genuine knowledge of
Japanese martial culture. It is curious that this belief persists in
the absence of any supporting evidence.

Soon I started learning Japanese for two reasons. One was that
Hiroshima truly was inaka. I was the sole foreigner in my
locality and no one, but no one, spoke English sufficiently well to
carry on a simple conversation. Even some of my Japanese colleagues in
the English Department, supposedly experts in their field, would
scurry away rather than risk linguistic defeat and ignominy at the
hands of a native speaker. The second reason was much more
important. I felt as if I had suddenly arrived on another planet and
was totally unable to participate in any kind of life on this
planet. A few days after my arrival, I watched Kurosawa's
Kagemusha in Japanese and without any subtitles. I understood
about 2% of what was going on and this was hardly due to the
dialogue. Billboards, books and newspapers provided daily proof of
illiteracy. This was a major spur to action. I signed up for a year's
private tuition at the local Y.M.C.A. After this, one of my students
became my unofficial language tutor and this arrangement lasted for
the next five years. While this was happening I had been given tenure
at the University and was informed on the day I received my
credentials from the University President that everything had to be in
Japanese from then on.

Sometimes the issue is raised of the need for aikido to maintain its
Japanese roots. Now it is universal 'mass' martial art, the bowing and
Japanese terminology are no longer necessary for proficiency in the
art. Well, in some sense they were never necessary to begin with,
since ability to execute waza never depended on talking or bowing
correctly (except incidentally). However, seeing the martial art
embedded in its culture leads me to wonder what will be left if the
art is stripped of its Japanese underpinnings. Coming to see the art
embedded in its culture has been a major revelation over the years I
have been living here. While this has deepened my knowledge of the
art, I have also come to believe that transplanting the art to another
culture, with different values, cannot be an artificial process. It
has to be left to take root and there will be inevitable adaptation to
the new soil.

Training

Not long after arrival I was taken to see the Dojo-cho of the
Hiroshima Branch Dojo. Mr. Kitahira spoke Japanese with a thick local
accent and it took me a long time to work out what he was saying. I
became a member of the dojo and at that point a relationship began
that has lasted for over 25 years. Kitahira Shihan led the training
every evening in the local budokan and was supported by a phalanx of
senior yudansha. Well over half the members practicing daily in the
dojo wore hakama and this had a clear effect on the quality of
training. In my own case I stopped teaching aikido and became a
student again.